From: Niall O Broin (niall at domain linux.ie)
Date: Thu 30 Aug 2001 - 15:39:55 IST
On Thu, Aug 30, 2001 at 10:28:01AM +0100, Dave Burke wrote:
> > Using sendmail, /var/spool/mail/$USER is not a directory but a file. Qmail
> > uses a directory with individual files for each mail - this format is known
> > as maildir and is also supported by postfix, exim and perhaps other MTAs
> > (perhaps there's even maildir support for sendmail out there, though a quick
> > google didn't turn up anything except references to other MTAs :-) ).
>
> I would have thought that sendmail doesn't need to be aware of the way in
> which mail is stored on a system,as its just an MTA?
> We have procmail patched on some of our mail servers to support maildir, and
> sendmail just lets procmail worry about how to complete delivery of the mails..
>
> >
> > This file is created/appended to by sendmail as needed.
>
> s/sendmail/procmail/
In your case, or in that of anyone else using procmail or some other MDA
(mail delivery agent ?) or MRA (mail reception agent ?) (I just made those
TLAs up - were they al;ready used) sendmail is configured to hand over each
received mail to the M[RD]A for disposal. However, if you don't use a
separate M[DR]A then sendmail carries out the functions of the M[RD]A and
puts the mail where it should go, which by default is in a file in
/var/spool/mail/$USER where $USER is the user to whom sendmail has
determined that the mail is addressed, taking account of aliases, virtuser
tables etc. In this case, sendmail does of course need to be aware of the
way in which mail is stored on the system. One big mail file can be a
mess to handle with NFS mounted mail spools, which are quite common, which
is what inspired the invention of the maildir format, native with qmail and
supported by postfix and exim and I presume other MTAs.
Regards,
Niall
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